Being an offshore finance centre isn't something you can just become. It requires an industrial or resource extraction base to generate wealth (e.g. Dubai/singapore/London/NYC) or a client state relationship with a powerful country (Bahamas). Lesotho, for instance, would never be able to do this and neither would 1950s Singapore.
On Winsemius, in its early history, Singapore was indeed using a cargo cult mass industrialisation, and it of course was only half successful.
A much less "genius" idea of turning the country into an offshore finance centre was what made it, and it was not his idea.
It was Lee junior, who spent his youth in London, who brought it.